About 150 to 200 pro-Palestinian protesters gathered in Park city, Utah on Sunday, shutting down the normally bustling Main Street during the fourth day of the Sundance Film Festival, the mecca of independent film festivals.

Among the protestors in attendance were recent Sundance debutants and Irish hip hop trio, Kneecap- who shared a post on X highlighting the protest.

The group's statement read: "The US is directly complicit in this genocide and enable it with consistent weaponry to a fanatical regime and a pathetic disregard for international law".

This morning in Park City we attended a vigil for the tens of thousands of murdered Palestinians.

The US is directly complicit in this genocide and enables it with consistent weaponry to a fanatical regime and a pathetic disregard of international law.

Free Palestine 🇵🇸 pic.twitter.com/TeyRFG20aG

— KNEECAP (@KNEECAPCEOL) January 20, 2024

Speaking to LA The Times,  a Kneecap cast member Jessica Reynolds said: “All oppression is connected and especially in Ireland, our film is everything about colonialism and rejecting that. And that’s why it’s so important to support these causes like we’re championing here. We’re all Palestinians.”

Reynolds' co-star Simone Kirby added, “I just thought it’s great that something like this is happening here in the middle of a film festival. I think that’s fantastic, because artists are empathetic people.”

Holding signs that read “Ceasefire Now” and “Hospitals Are Not Targets” and chanting “Free, Free Palestine. Occupation is a crime,” protesters gathered behind the metal barricades at the  festival’s Filmmaker Lodge, attempting to draw the entertainment industry’s attention to the plight of Palestine.

As of the most recent estimate, 25,105 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, while another 62,681 have been wounded, according the Associated Press January 21st.

The war has gone on for over 100 days, after Hamas launched an attack on October 7th on the SUPERNOVA music festival which killed 1200 people and kidnapped a further 240.

110 of these hostages have been returned to Israel, as of January 2024,

Both the Sundance Institute, which organises the annual festival, and the Park City Police Department, had advance warning of the action, which began around noon local time. Utah Highway patrol officers were also present on the scene.

There were a small number of counter-protesters at the event, including a man with an Israeli flag and a microphone who read the names of the hostages aloud and others who chanted “Bring them home”.

The Kneecap film has received rave reviews at Sundance, debuting with a 100% score on critic aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes and been named by Anna Souza, a programmer for the Sundance film festival as the "number 1' movie of the Sundance film festival in an interview with Letterboxd.

The film was acquired by Sony Pictures Classics for the rights to the film in North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Turkey and the Middle East shortly after its premiere at the festival.